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The Beginner's Guide
Welcome to the World of Esk! This page is designed for those of you who are new to the game, or new to role-playing games altogether. Here you'll find helpful tips on how to create your character and how to do things in the game once your character is finished. Creating Your Character Part 1 Choose Your Race Before you figure out anything else about your character, you should probably choose your race. In most cases, though your Game Master may allow more races or restrict some, you will be able to choose from 5 basic races. 1. Humans 2. Avirans 3. Salmak 4. Vardoks 5. Nevtimak Each race has good points and bad points, and some, like Avirans, have special abilities. Think about what kind of character you want to play, and choose the race that will be best suited to that character. Choose Your Name Coming up with a name for your character can be quite difficult. Thankfully, each race has a naming scheme, and some even have languages! Human Names: Human names can be from any human language, though English is more common. If you need some inspiration, check out this site! It has literally thousands of names to choose from. 'Aviran Names:' Avirans have no particular naming tradition, and choose their own names. As such, an Aviran name may be from any language, or have no meaning at all. There is, however, an Aviran language, and many Avirans use it to name themselves. Here are a few examples of Aviran names. Sileyn Gerin Salmak Names: Salmak usually only have one name, though some have titles. Reading about the Salmak language will help you pick out a name for your character. Here are a few examples of Salmak names. Krevlek Jorvask Vyklanak Elnamak Thralan (female) Vyscan (female) Karak (female) 'Vardok Names:' Vardoks have first and last names, often containing double vowels. Their names are the easiest to create, since the Vardok language uses all the sounds English does. Here are a few examples of Vardok names. Sha Daa Donk Ong Kai Ong Paar Tou Dar Kaa Verr Na Nevtimak Names: Nevtimak names are generally unpronounceable to most of the other races. Because of this, Nevtimak usually use nicknames around those people. The nickname can be anything you think sounds good. Personal Info Once your character has a name, you need to know a little bit more about him or her. Decide what gender he or she will be, how old he or she is, how much he or she weighs, and how tall he or she is. Average weights and heights for all the races are available on their respective pages. Also, there's a section that comes after all of that, a place where you can describe exactly what your character looks like. You don't have to fill that in if you don't want to, but sometimes it's nice to have something like that down on paper. Faction Does your character belong to an organization? If so, this is where you should put the name of that organization. You can find more information about factions here, here, and here. Hometown Where does your character come from? Take a look at this map of Draconfall, the main continent, and decide what city you'd like to be from. Some of the cities have descriptions on the wiki, but if you can't find the information you need,, ask your Game Master. Job Many role-playing games have classes (thief, warrior, mage, etc) that force you to play your character a certain way. In Esk, we have Jobs. Your job can be whatever you want, as long as your Game Master approves it. If you choose a job, your character can have a few free things. You get a free normal skill that has to do with your job, and one free item that also has to do with your job. Contacts Contacts are important people that your character knows. You can have as many contacts as you want, provided that you also fill out character sheets for them. Creating Your Character Part 2 (Original) Now that you know some of the most basic things about your character, it's time to figure out what your character can do. The way you figure this out is by adding points to certain parts of your character sheet. Each player starts out with 230 points to assign to the following things. Attributes: 'Each attribute can go up to Level 100. '''Status: '''Status has 5 levels. Each level costs 2 points. For each level you put into Status, you get a 20% chance that someone will recognize your name when mentioned in your home city, an 18% chance in your home region, and a 16% chance elsewhere. For an additional 2 points per level, you can have followers, people who do what you tell them to. For Level 1 Status, you gain 2 followers. For Level 2 Status, you gain 10 followers. For Level 3 Status, you gain 50 followers. For Level 4 Status, you gain 250 followers. For Level 5 Status, you get to be the head of an entire organization (either one that exists already, or one that you create) '''Education: '''Every level you put into education gives you a number of extra starting skill points equal to your Wits/10. Education also allows you to upgrade your skills and attributes by reading books, at the rate of one Knowledge Point for every 10 levels in Wits. '''Traits: '''Traits are things about your character's personality that impact his or her performance and interactions with other characters and the world. Each Trait costs a different amount of points, depending on its usefulness. '''Items: '''Items cost 1 point for a small item, 2 points for a medium item, 3 points for a large item, and 4 for a huge item. You get 1 free item that has to do with your profession, and 1 free item for every skill that you have of Expert level or above. '''Wealth: '''You get to roll 1 free Wealth die (a 100-sided die, or a percentile die plus a 10-sided die). Extra Wealth dice can be bought for 1 point each. Attributes Attributes represent your character's physical and mental faculties. '''Wits - '''Wits represents your character's intelligence and perceptiveness. It determines how well your character can reason and notice things. It's useful if you want to play a character who's good at figuring things out. '''Dynamism '- Dynamism represents your character's force of personality. It doesn't determine your personality, but it does determine how strong it is. Dynamism is useful if you want to play a character who can influence people to do things. 'Will '- Will represents your character's ability to persevere, to resist persuasion, and to do magic. The higher will your character has, the more powerful his spells will be, and the less easily he will be convinced by characters with high dynamism. 'Might '- Might represents your character's physical strength. It affects how much your character can carry, and how much hand-to-hand (melee) damage your character does in battle. '''Precision - Precision represents your character's aim and manual dexterity. It's useful if you want your character to be a thief or an archer. Agility '''- Agility represents your character's footspeed and reaction time. Skills Skills are abilities your character has learned how to do. A character can have up to 5 levels in a skill, and each level costs 1 skill point. You can find your starting mental skill points by adding your mental attribute numbers ('''Wits, Will, Dynamism) and dividing the result by 10. You can find your physical skill points by doing the same to your physical attributes (Might, Precision, Agility). Mental skills are skills that relate primarily to one of your mental attributes. Physical skills are skills that relate primarily to one of your physical attributes. Character Creation Part 2 (Dynamic Character Creation System) The Dynamic Character Creation System (DCCS) is designed to link your character's attributes, skills, and advantages to your character's story. This method of character creation is a little more random, but it makes for a more interesting experience. Your character will go through 4 stages of life experience as you choose how he or she develops. At the beginning of each stage, you'll roll a certain type of die for each attribute to determine your character's starting attribute points, and then assign any skill points you get for that stage. Below are the stages of character development, along with instructions for completing them. Birth First, roll a 3-sided die for each one of your attributes. These are the starting attribute points your character is born with. Obviously, your character doesn't have any skills at this point in his or her life, so you don't need to assign any skill points. Next, you'll need to decide what kind of family your character was born into. You'll do this by choosing from a list of descriptors. Some are positive, some are negative, and some are neutral. Each positive descriptor costs a certain amount of points, and provides something good for your character. Each negative descriptor gives a certain amount of points back, and gives your character a flaw. Neutral ones either cost nothing or can be negative or positive. Before you start choosing descriptors, however, you'll need to roll one 6-sided die to find out how many points you start with. When you run out of those, the only way you'll be able to get more is by choosing negative descriptors. Click here to see a list of sample descriptors for the Birth Stage. This list is by no means exhaustive, and players can feel free to make up their own, subject to Game Master approval. Negative descriptors are red, positive descriptors are blue, and neutral ones are black. Childhood First, roll a 10-sided die for each one of your attributes, adding the resulting numbers to the numbers already there from the Birth Stage. At this point, since your character will have started learning skills, find your number of starting skill points by adding attribute numbers together and dividing the result by 10. Do this with all of your mental attributes (Wits, Will, Dynamism) to find out the number of mental skill points you can assign, and then do the same with your physical attributes (Might, Precision, Agility).to find out the number of physical skill points you can assign Next, roll another 6-sided die to determine how many points you get to choose descriptors from this stage. Click here to see a list of descriptors for the Childhood stage. Adolescence First, roll a 20-sided die for each one of your attributes, adding the resulting numbers to the numbers already there from the Birth and Childhood stages. However, this time you must also add the numbers from the die rolls together and divide them by 10 to find out how many additional skill points your character gets. Add the numbers from the dice you rolled for your mental attributes and divide them by 10 to find out how many additional mental skill points your character gets, and do the same for your physical attributes to find out how many additional physical skill points your character gets. Next, roll another 6-sided die for descriptors. Click here to see a list of descriptors for the Adolescence stage. Adulthood Senescence